


agent cold

by bellafarallones



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Shower Sex, indrid is an fbi agent assigned to work with stern to find bigfoot, indrid is human with powers, the main ship here is indrid/stern, the mothman is a seperate entity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:07:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27050200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellafarallones/pseuds/bellafarallones
Summary: “You’re going looking for bigfoot,” said Hayes, and it was all Agent Joseph Stern could do not to jump for joy. He’d been lobbying for years now that cryptids were worth caring about, and finally the higher-ups had taken notice.“And you’ll have company.”update 10/20: added a second chapter thats explicit. the first chapter is rated t and stands alone perfectly well
Relationships: Barclay/Agent Stern (The Adventure Zone), Indrid Cold/Agent Stern (The Adventure Zone), Indrid Cold/Duck Newton
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a few of these concepts came from the answer to an ask i sent to thiswasinevitable a while ago but the really weird shit is all mine

“You’re going looking for bigfoot,” said Hayes, and it was all Agent Joseph Stern could do not to jump for joy. He’d been lobbying for  _ years  _ now that cryptids were worth caring about, and finally the higher-ups had taken notice. 

“And you’ll have company.”

What? Joseph looked at him. He’d always assumed this would be a him-against-the-world kind of assignment. Nobody else had ever expressed interest, as far as he knew. 

Hayes must have seen the look on his face, because he laughed. “Yeah. Don’t get too excited. Agent Cold, you ever met him?”

He had not, though he’d heard stories. Mostly negative ones.

“He’s an old-timer. I guess Hoover must have seen something of himself in him.”

Joseph wondered idly if Hayes was referencing J. Edgar Hoover’s notorious homosexuality or his evilness. Possibly both.

“Though Cold always closes his cases, so I’ve gotta say, Joe, my bet’s on you two coming back with an actual bigfoot, much as I wouldn’t have said that a week ago.” There was a knock on Hayes’ heavy office door. “Come in!” he called.

Agent Cold was not wearing a tie, which had literally never occurred to Joseph that one could do. Hayes had called him an old-timer, but though his hair was silver, the age of his face was indeterminate. He wore glasses with red lenses so thick and deeply tinted that they seemed opaque. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said smoothly.

“Glad you could make it up here, Cold,” said Hayes, gesturing to the chair next to the one Joseph was sitting in. “Where is it they have you now? The basement?”

Joseph was surprised to see that Agent Cold seemed not to care that he was being insulted. “Right next to the furnace,” he murmured, but the easy smile did not leave his face.

“Anyway, this is Agent Stern. I suppose you’ll be getting to know each other pretty well, seeing as you’re going to, what, sit in the woods for a couple of weeks?” Hayes let out a short little laugh and tossed a manila folder across the desk towards Agent Cold, where it landed with papers spilling out. 

Joseph had already glanced through his own copy of the case file and knew that he himself had written or assembled every piece of documentation within. 

“Now get out of my office,” said Hayes. “I’ve gotta prep for my two o’clock.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Joseph, as Agent Cold scooped the papers back into his copy of the case file, and then they were back in the hallway. “I’m looking forward to working with you, Agent Cold.”

“Please, call me Indrid.”

“Alright. Indrid. Well, I’ve been lobbying for this project for a long time so I’m really quite excited to get started so if you’d like to come to my office - it’s not as nice as Hayes’ - and talk, I’d -”

Indrid cut in. “I haven’t read the briefing yet. I will go do that, and then I will email you.”

“Oh - okay?”

Indrid nodded and headed towards the elevator without another word. 

Joseph watched him go. Well, that hadn’t gone  _ too  _ terribly? Indrid hadn’t complained about the assignment or told him that bigfoot wasn’t real, and that was more than he usually got. 

\--

When Joseph came into work the next morning, he saw that he did in fact have an email from Indrid, who offered commentary on his methodology and asked, most surprisingly, what Joseph’s plan was for  _ when  _ he found bigfoot. Not  _ if. When.  _

Honestly Joseph hadn’t thought about it, and now he figured that finding bigfoot would be such a major accomplishment that the aftermath would be the responsibility of someone else. Someone higher-up. 

Joseph didn’t have time that morning to write a response. The Department of Unexplained Phenomena had brought in a guest speaker to discuss indiginous sovereignty, and when he arrived at the room where the talk was being held, he saw the glint of red glasses in one of the middle rows.

Hayes and a few of his coworkers were already there, but they had not saved a seat for him, and the chair next to Indrid’s was empty.

“This seat taken?”

“Not at all.” Indrid was holding a cup of the bright yellow liquid available in a dispenser at the side of the room - presumably lemonade, though no lemon Joseph had ever seen was anywhere close to that color. 

“That stuff looks kinda radioactive,” said Joseph. 

Indrid took another sip. “Perhaps.”

“I, uh. I read your email.”

“Excellent. When do we leave?”

“What?”

“For Kepler. You seem to have done your research quite thoroughly, and you did identify the most credible recent sightings as being in the Monongahela national forest, so there’s nothing left to do but investigate, is there?”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess we may as well get out there. Uh, we could drive down on Sunday and start investigating bright and early Monday morning?”

“I am amenable to that.”

The presentation started. Joseph took notes - it wasn’t particularly relevant to work in West Virginia, but he didn’t know where he’d be operating in the future. 

The presenter reached a slide that was a wall of text. 

“What does that say?” Indrid breathed. He was looking straight ahead, but had leaned a little closer to Joseph.

“Hm?”

“The slide. I can’t make out the words. If you could read it out for me I’d appreciate it.”

“Tribal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over civil cases,” Joseph read under his breath. “Divorce, child-custody, adoption, and probate cases.”

“Thank you.”

\--

Sunday morning Joseph was leaning against the side of his car. The only thing moving was the bus that pulled up to the edge of the parking lot and disgorged Indrid, whose glasses glinted in the morning sun. 

There was an awkward forty-five seconds while Indrid speed-walked across the parking lot. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. 

Joseph shrugged. He was one of those people who allowed at least two hours of extra time for every trip in anticipation of unexpected delays, and this one was no exception. “No skin off my teeth. Ready to go?”

The rolling hills of southern Virginia morphed into pine-encrusted mountains as they drove northwest, listening to the local radio stations change as they went. Joseph looked over at the sound of Indrid ripping open a bag of gummy worms. Indrid raised the bag in offering, and Joseph shook his head. 

They had passed far too many confederate flags and Trump signs for Joseph’s comfort, but Indrid’s quietly effeminate manner and general limp-wristedness put him more at ease. Hayes had probably been referencing Hoover’s homosexuality, though whether Indrid matched him in general malice was yet to be seen.

Joseph had always struggled to keep up with the performative masculinity of many of his coworkers. Now, having heard the way they talked about Indrid behind his back, he was even more afraid what might happen to him if he deviated from the heteromasculine line. 

Joseph had planned to stay in the Motel 6 in Kepler, but on the way they passed what looked like an oversized log cabin by the side of the road, parking lot empty except for a couple of pickup trucks and a worse-for-wear Lincoln Continental. 

“Stop!” said Indrid, the first word he’d spoken in about four hours, and Joseph slammed on the brakes. 

“What?”

“We need to stay here.”

“But - the Motel 6?”

Indrid shook his head vehemently. “We’ll have a better chance of finding bigfoot if we stay here.”

The absolute certainty in his voice threw Joseph off. “What? Why?”

“Because. Trust me on this. We’ll be able to talk to more locals this way.”

“It might be more expensive,” said Joseph, but he was already pulling into the parking lot, which had cracks so big that saplings were growing out of a few of them, past a sign that read Amnesty Lodge. 

Indrid was smiling. “You drove, so it’s only fair that I fill out our expense forms anyway.”

The lobby of the Amnesty Lodge was more crowded than Joseph would have expected from a rural hotel. Everyone turned to look at them as they arrived.

“Can I help you?” said a woman with gray hair.

“We’d like to stay at this hotel?” said Joseph. “Two rooms?”

“We only have one room clean,” said the woman. “The earliest we’ll have two is tomorrow night.”

Joseph looked at Indrid, who shrugged. 

“We can do one room for tonight.” Joseph was looking around 

“I hear they have bedbugs,” said one of the men in the lobby.

“What? No we don’t,” said another man who’d just entered the room holding a tray of tea. 

Everyone else in the lobby turned and looked daggers at him. 

“You want a room?” said the man with the tea once he’d set the tray down on a table. “Come with me, I’ll check you in.” He was perhaps the tallest and most handsome man Joseph had ever seen: auburn man-bun and beard, acid-wash jeans ripped over the thigh, red flannel stretched over broad lumberjack shoulder. He excavated a red ledger from underneath a pile of papers, flipped it open, and clicked a pen. “I’m Barclay, by the way. So how long do you think you’ll be staying with us?”

“A few weeks? As long as we need to, really.”

He raised his eyebrows. “What are you doing in Kepler?”

“We’re looking for bigfoot.” In the moment that followed, Joseph realized that the entire room had suddenly gone silent. 

“Well, I wish you luck,” said the man in the flannel. All the friendliness had gone out of his voice. “Breakfast’s at nine in here.”

\--

The one room had two beds, at least, but it did mean that Joseph was subjected to the yellow light of the lamp on the bedside table as Indrid sat up well past eleven with the case file an inch in front of his nose. 

Joseph didn’t know what time it was when he gave up on Indrid turning the light off, pulled the blankets over his head, and went to sleep. 

He woke up at eight without an alarm. Indrid’s glasses were on the bedside table, and the sunlight through their lenses cast a red tint on the cover of the case file beneath them. Off their owner’s face, Joseph could see how thick and strongly tinted the lenses were: it was a wonder Indrid could see anything through them at all. 

Indrid was still asleep, wrapped-up tight in a cocoon of blanket with only his nose poking out, and his silver hair against the pillow and his dark eyelashes curled up on his cheeks. The silver must be dyed, Joseph thought. And -  _ cute,  _ though Joseph suppressed that thought at once.

He dressed in the bathroom, and when it got to be eight-thirty and Indrid was still sound asleep, shook his shoulder gently.

“Hm?” said Indrid sleepily. He groped for his glasses with his eyes still half-shut. “What’s happening?”

“Breakfast is in half an hour. I thought you might want to be up for it.” 

“Oh. No, you go ahead.” Indrid left his glasses on the table and snuggled up in his blankets once again.

“Alright. I’ll, uh, I’ll let you sleep.”

There were tables of varying sizes in the lobbies, all set for breakfast. The largest was mostly full of a group of young adults talking excitedly with each other. They all fell silent and looked at Joseph when he came into the room, and then pointedly looked away from him and returned to talking about a television show Joseph had never seen. 

The gray-haired woman he’d seen the day before was sitting with another middle-aged woman at a table by the fire, but neither of them looked up at his arrival. The man who’d told him there were bed bugs was absent.

Joseph picked a small empty table by the front window. In a moment Barclay appeared, wearing an apron over his flannel shirt - today’s was blue - and balancing an improbable volume of food on platters on his forearms. He distributed pancakes to the large table first, and they addressed him as if he was one of them. Did everyone here know each other? 

Barclay came next to Joseph’s table and deposited a plate of steaming blueberry pancakes. “Where’s your friend?” he said, pausing for a moment to adjust his trays. 

“He’s, uh. Not coming.”

“You want coffee? I’m usually the only person here who drinks it.”

“Oh, yes, please.”

Barclay nodded and went away again. Stern looked around the room. There were pitchers of water and orange juice on the large table, but he didn’t feel comfortable approaching to fill his glass. So he started cutting into his stack of pancakes, which smelled  _ heavenly. _

Barclay returned with another tray with a coffeepot, two mugs, and a selection of cream and sugar, as well as little shakers of cinnamon and nutmeg. “Mind if I join you?” he said.

“Be my guest.”

Barclay sat down across from Joseph with his own plate of pancakes. He assembled a mug for himself with so much cream and sugar that it was maybe only fifty percent actual coffee in the end. Then he picked up his empty glass. “I’m going to get water, you want anything?”

“Yes, water if you wouldn’t mind,” said Joseph. Maybe Barclay had sensed his reluctance to approach a group of clearly-hostile twentysomethings. 

Joseph poured himself a cup of coffee, black, and took a grateful sip. Much better coffee than he’d expected from rural West Virginia. Barclay returned with their glasses of water and sat down again. “I didn’t catch your name yesterday.”

“Joseph,” he said. “And my partner is Indrid.” Barclay only nodded, but Joseph instantly kicked himself. “Uh. Colleague. Sorry, we’re -” Joseph lowered his voice “-we work for the FBI? Not like dating partners. I’m single. Uh.” Foot, meet mouth. “And you’re Barclay, right?”

“Yep.” Luckily Barclay just looked amused.

Joseph put a mouthful of pancake in his mouth. “Oh. Oh, this is delicious. Did you make these?”

Barclay beamed. “I’m glad you enjoy it! The secret ingredient is malt powder.”

“Well, whatever you did, it’s  _ amazing _ .”

“So,” said Barclay after a few minutes of quiet chewing. “Bigfoot, huh?”

“You a believer?”

Barclay shook his head. “I don’t mean to be crass, but surely if bigfoot was real someone would have found a dead one in the woods by now.”

“You’d think, right? I agree that that part doesn’t make much sense. But there have been too many credible sightings not to believe that there’s something real behind them. Maybe not what anyone expects. But that’s what I’m here to find out.”

\--

Indrid finally appeared around eleven, dressed in a white shirt, beige cardigan, and jeans. “I figured office wear would be too conspicuous,” he said by way of explanation.

Joseph thought privately that even a full tuxedo would be less conspicuous than Indrid’s current look, which could perhaps best be described as  _ gay poetry professor _ , especially when combined with the red sunglasses and silver hair. 

Undeniably, though, the outfit suited him better than a suit and tie. Joseph had never thought of him as attractive before, this man with his eyes always hidden, but now he saw his delicate cheekbones and how smooth his skin was - surely he was too young to be as much of an old-timer as Hayes had made him out to be - and his pink lips and long dark eyelashes curled up behind his glasses, visible only when the angle was just right. 

Shit.  _ Great job, Joseph. Thirsting after your colleague.  _ “I thought we could get the lay of the land in downtown Kepler,” he said.

Indrid shrugged. “Sure.”

“Downtown” Kepler looked just like one might expect of a town unsure of its own economic niche. There was a store that sold hiking gear, a gift shop that seemed to be themed around 20th-century coal mining, and some skiing-adjacent businesses. 

Joseph was more invested in his monologue about bigfoot, to which Indrid listened with seemingly rapt attention. Either he was either a better actor than anyone would have guessed, or he cared more about bigfoot than Joseph had anticipated. 

Joseph was so invested in his cryptozoological speculation that he only noticed an instant before it happened that Indrid, a few steps to his left, was not paying attention to the curb. Joseph stopped in the middle of a sentence and watched, as if in slow motion, as Indrid fell flat on his face into the street. 

“Fuck,” said Joseph. “Are you okay?”

“Been better,” said Indrid, and stumbled to his feet with Joseph’s help. His nose was bleeding freely onto his shirt, but his hands went at once to his glasses, running his hands over the frames and lenses. “Are my glasses okay?” 

Joseph blinked. “Yeah? They’re not broken or anything. But, Indrid, your nose.”

Indrid touched it and came away with slick blood on his fingers. “Ah, yes.” The magnitude of what had just happened seemed to catch up to him. His voice, stuffy from the blood clogging his nose, was pissed-off. “Hey. Hey, Agent Stern? If you see me about to do something like that again, maybe warn me instead of just watching me almost concuss myself?”

“What just happened? You just… walked off the curb like it wasn’t there!”

“I wasn’t paying attention! I was listening to you and I wasn’t paying attention!”

“Are you  _ blind?” _

“How about you tell me?” Indrid tore his glasses off and pushed them onto Joseph’s face. “You look through my prescription and see how fucking blind I am.”

Joseph was too distracted by Indrid’s face so close to his and Indrid’s fingers brushing against his hair and ears to settle the glasses on his nose to reflect at first on what he was seeing. But once Indrid stepped away he could see that the red tint was so dark he could hardly make out anything at all, and what he could make out was so blurry that he knew wearing these would give him a headache after not too long. 

“Oh.” Joseph took the glasses off and gave them back to Indrid, who jammed them back on his own face. His expression had returned to neutrality. 

“Sorry for snapping at you,” said Indrid. “I’m usually paying more attention to where I’m walking.”

“And that’s your glasses prescription?”

Indrid sighed. “Yes. My eyes are fucked. Oversensitive to light and I can only see what’s an inch in front of my nose, even with the glasses.”

“There’s a vision test to join the FBI! You have to be at least 20/40!”

Indrid had lifted up the hem of his shirt to stem the flow of blood from his nose, and brilliant red bloomed across the white fabric. “You can imagine, then, why I don’t exactly advertise it.”

“We need to get you back to the lodge,” said Joseph. “And cleaned up.”

“I can get myself back. You should go on without me.”

“You just told me you’re basically blind! I don’t know if I’m comfortable letting you walk along the highway by yourself!”

“I usually manage better than this. I’ll be fine. I promise.”

Stern waffled. He was pretty sure Indrid was technically his superior, as far as the FBI chain of command went.

“I need you to see the rest of downtown so you can tell me about it,” said Indrid, with the voice of all the professors in college Joseph had tried so desperately not to disappoint, and it was all he could do to obey. 

“Okay. If you’re sure. Don’t get hurt.”

“I won’t,” said Indrid. “See you soon.”

\--

Indrid made it back to Amnesty Lodge without further incident. His physical surroundings were a red blur, but the world a few seconds yet to come was in focus. His visions were like the walls of a narrow tunnel, just far apart enough for him to keep his fingertips on each as he passed: visions of himself crumpled under a passing car on one side, visions of tumbling down an embankment into brambles on the other. When he’d tripped off the curb, he’d been too focused on the present moment to see what was physically and temporally in front of him.

_ In normal terms, I am nearsighted. In spacetime terms, I am farsighted indeed. _

Just a little clairvoyance joke he liked to tell himself. 

By the time he made it back to the lodge the blood on his face and shirt had dried enough that he didn’t have to worry about dripping it on the carpet. He pushed the door open, already knowing that he would be intercepted. 

“Oh, Jesus, are you okay?” came a voice from the lobby. A man he could not see, a man whose pine smell penetrated Indrid’s blood-clogged nose, a man whose hand on his shoulder lingered on in a thousand futures. Duck Newton. “What happened? Let’s get you cleaned up.” Duck must have been waiting for someone, because there was nobody else in the lobby. 

“My name is Indrid,” he said, because if he didn’t tell people his name immediately he usually forgot. “I tripped.”

“Ranger Duck Newton, at your service. Here, there’s a bathroom just in here.” Duck guided him into a brightly-lit room off the lobby and started pulling paper towels out of the little basket over the sink.

“Thank you,” said Indrid, accepting the wet paper towel Duck offered him and pressing it to his face. 

“Does it hurt? Can I get you anything else?”

“No, I’m fine. I get nosebleeds all the time.” Indrid cupped his hands under the tap until they filled with water and he could submerge his nose in cold water, blow out snot and blood before it occurred to him that this was too disgusting to do in front of a stranger. 

“Well, that’s good. Well, not good, but you know what I mean. Normally the humidity here is pretty good for stuff like that.”

Indrid looked up to the mirror and realized he couldn’t tell if there was still blood smeared on his face, because everything looked red to him. “I need to go to my room and change my shirt.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Duck. “I was here when you checked in yesterday. We don’t get out-of-towners here super often, especially outside skiing season.”

“Then who normally stays at the lodge?” Indrid groped for the bar of soap and scrubbed the blood off his hands.

“Uh,” said Duck. “Uh. Well. You see.”

Indrid realized two things simultaneously. Firstly, Duck was incapable of telling a lie. Secondly, if Indrid forced something out of him, Duck would never again allow them to be alone together out of fear of letting the truth slip. 

“Forget I asked.” Indrid smiled. “Thank you again for your help.”

“Uh, yeah, any time. Hey, if you wanna hang out in the lobby after you get changed, I’ll be around.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

\--

Indrid woke up early the next morning, but skipped breakfast anyway. He had to be at the Monongahela National Forest ranger station by nine. Duck was standing outside when he got there, rocking back and forth nervously on his heels. 

“Good morning,” said Indrid.

“You came!” said Duck. “Uh, I promise when I invited you I thought more people would show up.” 

Indrid was the only visitor present for that morning’s nature walk. “Oh, I don’t mind.” He didn’t like large groups of people, anyway.

The sun was pleasant on Indrid’s face and the breeze lifted his hair as they walked. 

“Barclay said y’all are looking for bigfoot for the FBI,” said Duck conversationally. “Is that why you’re so eager to venture into the woods?”

“If anyone asks, that’s what I’ll say.”

That got a laugh out of Duck, probably more than it deserved.

“It’s rather a strange task for the FBI, isn’t it? My colleague’s pet project. I really just got sent along because they don’t like sending people places alone.”

“So you don’t really… care, one way or the other, whether bigfoot is real or not?”

“Not personally, no. It’s not really my business.” Not only was this the answer that would most put Duck at ease, but for Indrid, it was also the truth. Indrid truly did not care one way or another whether bigfoot was out there. He had quite enough going on with himself and he didn’t see a reason to bother anyone else just because they weren’t quite mundane.

Duck nodded. “Makes sense.”

Indrid cleared his throat. “Duck, you know this forest pretty well, right?” 

“That’s my job.”

Whether bigfoot was real or not was not the right question to ask, though anticipation of Duck’s response told Indrid the answer well enough. “Is there anything in these woods that scares you? Anything dangerous?”

Duck shook his head. “I mean, we’ve got black bears and bobcats, but they mostly stay away from humans. The most dangerous thing would be to come out here unprepared and break your ankle or something.”

Indrid looked out into the trees, dark silhouettes against the red-tinted light. Breaking his ankle wasn’t a possibility as long as he stayed focused. 

Duck stopped so suddenly that Indrid almost ran into him and raised his binoculars to his head. “Do you hear that?” Duck said. “It sounds like…” Then he imitated the birdcall, a choppy trill. 

“Yes,” Indrid said, because he did. Something was singing in the foliage above their heads.

“That’s a veery thrush,” said Duck, still scanning the canopy with his binoculars. “There!” He pointed. “Do you see it?”

“Um,” said Indrid. He saw a red blur mottled by sunlight. “I’m afraid I’m a little nearsighted for birding. What does it look like?”

“Here,” said Duck, disentangling his binoculars from his neck and handing them over. “It’s… well, they’re really small, and white on their bellies and kind of tan on top. They’re one of the cuter birds we get here, in my opinion.”

“Oh,” said Indrid. He raised the binoculars to his eyes, and suddenly the lower branches were as clear as a page of written words when he held it up against his nose. He wanted so badly to see this bird. He summoned whatever magic he possessed, any power that could be channeled away from the infinite mystery of the future towards this one bird. 

And he saw it. A little bird with a white belly and a tan back and black beady eyes. “Oh! I see it! It’s so round!” Indrid watched it until it hopped off the branch and out of sight, then passed the binoculars back to Duck and flapped his hands with glee. “Thank you, Duck. Truly.”

“Hey, I’m glad you’re having fun.”

The veery thrush called again, as if in acknowledgement.  _ I am here! You saw me! _

\--

When Indrid came back to the lodge the lobby was crowded. He could smell their worry, not now but a few seconds in advance. More than one of his senses was sharper in the future than in the present.

And he saw everyone in inhuman shapes: the blonde with fangs, the gray seal, the ghost woman, and Barclay with thick auburn hair covering his whole body and his shoulders even broader than usual. 

Great. His future powers were malfunctioning. He shouldn’t have abused them to look at a cute bird. Indrid waved awkwardly to the assembled crowd and turned down the hallway. He needed to rest,

Joseph was waiting outside his door. “Where have you been?”

“I was out in the woods looking for bigfoot. Didn’t find him.” Indrid got the key in the lock of his door and opened it. “And now I feel rather sick so if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go to bed.”

“Oh - okay? Is there anything I can do?”

“Nope!” Indrid closed his bedroom door in Joseph’s face with a smile. 

His shoulders slumped the instant he was alone. Had he seen Barclay as bigfoot just because he’d been thinking about it with Duck?

He didn’t think his visions could be influenced by what he was thinking about. Thank god he hadn’t responded to the flirtatious things he’d seen Joseph about to say: that was probably just wishful thinking on his part. 

He also hadn’t heard from his patron, the source of his power, in years. Was his power fading from the loss of contact?

That thought was scary enough to get Indrid out of bed again. He put his shoes back on and hurried out of the lodge, and then down the road away from town, towards the gas station near the interstate. 

If his visions were malfunctioning he might get hit by a car. At least then he’d know for sure. 

The cashier at the gas station did not acknowledge him as he walked in. He made a quick circuit of the aisles, past travel toiletries and bags of chips and car accoutrements. There was no eggnog in the refrigerator case, so he picked out a bottle of bright red fruit punch and took it to the cash register. 

After he bought it he unscrewed the bottle cap immediately and took a sip. He knew without looking at the bottle that this was corn syrup. He knew all the sweeteners: knew cane sugar, beet sugar, corn syrup and all the fakes, stevia and erythritol and the rest. 

Beet sugar was his favorite. But even this would fortify him enough to deal with the machine by the door, which blinked far too brightly for comfort. He leaned down to look right at the screen and read the options. The soonest number drawing was the next morning.

Indrid closed his eyes, saw himself looking up the winning numbers. He spent three dollars on a ticket, and tomorrow he’d know whether his powers still worked. 

He made his way back to the lodge without becoming roadkill and put the ticket into his briefcase. Then he got back into bed, where the sugar coursing through his veins effectively prevented him from falling asleep.

It was past dark, and Indrid was on hour three of playing Subway Surf with a combination of future vision and holding his phone very close to his face when a text appeared. 

_ Hey, this is Duck. I know this is weird and late notice, but I’m about to go on a night hike, and if you want to join me I’d appreciate the company.  _

He’d given his number to Duck at the end of their walk.  _ I would if I had a ride. _

_ I can pick you up at the lodge if you want,  _ Duck wrote back.

_ I’d like that. _

_ See you soon. _

Indrid put his shoes on, and a cardigan - his suitcase contained one set of dress clothes and several identical sets of jeans, white shirt, and cardigan - and ventured out to wait for Duck. From the lobby he could hear Barclay in the kitchen, pots and pans clattering, but he didn’t encounter anyone.

Duck’s truck appeared in the parking lot, and Indrid went out into the warm night. 

“Thanks for doing this,” Duck said.

“Thank you for inviting me.”

They drove in silence to the trailhead, but it was a comfortable silence, and Indrid got the impression that Duck was glad he let him be. 

“Three quarters of a mile,” said Duck, “but it’s a little steep in parts.” 

Duck had a flashlight, but other than that narrow beam the darkness was complete. Indrid slipped the sunglasses off his face and hung them on his collar. He noticed after about thirty seconds of walking that Duck’s gait was stiff and awkward. “You’re hurt.”

“Uh. Yeah. I had quite the afternoon. Part of why I wanted to see you, I guess.”

“What happened?”

“Um,” said Duck. “I was at the water park?”

Indrid stayed silent. 

“Yeah, there was this thing? Don’t worry about it. You wouldn’t think a monster made out of water would take it out of you so bad, but apparently… yeah, I got knocked around a little. As a matter of fact I’m surprised that I’m upright right now.” 

“Oh.”

“I probably shouldn’t have told you that. Fuck.” Duck stopped, turned around, shined his flashlight into Indrid’s face. “You can’t tell Agent Stern about this. I know it’s not technically bigfoot, but… Do you promise? For me? Please?”

Indrid shielded his eyes with his hand. “I won’t tell him. I promise.”

Duck’s shoulders slumped with relief. “Thank you.” He swung his flashlight beam back around and kept walking. Indrid followed, feeling out roots and stones with his feet. “I bet you don’t even believe me, huh? No such thing as water monsters.”

“I do believe you.” Indrid was mostly concerned with this additional evidence that seeing Barclay as actual bigfoot might not have been so off-base after all. He shouldn’t have doubted his visions. “I am somewhat acquainted with the supernatural myself. And with keeping secrets from the FBI.”

“How so?”

“I’m a seer.”

“Huh,” said Duck. “Figures you’d be.” They’d reached a steep part of the trail now, where there were four-by-fours laid to hold the dirt into steps. “Me too, I guess, but I’m not too good at it.”

“My patron taught me a lot.”

“Mine probably would if I’d let her.”

And then, in the final thirty meters before they looped back to the parking lot, the trail was broad and flat again, wide enough for them to walk side-by-side. 

There were futures where Duck asked to hold his hand, futures where he found Duck’s broad palm calloused and tender in places where the blisters of sword-training had not yet faded. But those possibilities did not become reality, and Indrid put them out of his mind.

“Thanks for coming out,” Duck said as he pulled into the lodge parking lot.

“Thank you for inviting me. I had a lovely evening, and I hope we can see each other again soon.” Indrid was trying to match the forwardness with which Duck had invited him on two walks in one day.

“Me too,” said Duck. “G’night, Indrid.”

“Goodnight.” Indrid climbed out of the truck and entered the Amnesty Lodge. 

\--

“Indrid? Are you in there?” Joseph was banging on the door to Indrid’s room at the Amnesty Lodge. He hadn’t seen Indrid all afternoon, since he’d said he felt sick. 

“Hello, Joseph.”

Joseph whipped his head around. Indrid was standing at the end of the hall, coming from the lobby. “What -? Indrid, where were you? I couldn’t get ahold of you and I was worried!”

“I went for a walk.”

“You said you were sick!”

“I had a headache. I feel better now.”

Joseph narrowed his eyes. “Are you planning to find bigfoot without me and take all the credit? Is that what this is? Because it’s not a good look.”

“No, Joseph. Difficult as this may be for you to believe, professional advancement is not my top priority.”

Joseph scowled. “Well, do you have a minute? If you’re feeling better I wanted to show you something.”

“You may as well.”

Joseph led Indrid into his room and closed the door behind him. “Okay. So I plugged a map of Monongahela into Wolfram Alpha and ranked each acre based on distance from major hiking trails, access to fresh water, and navigability. I thought we could concentrate our search on places bigfoot should be most likely to be.”

Indrid didn’t even try to focus on the brightly-colored map that appeared on Joseph’s laptop screen. “Would you be satisfied with finding bigfoot even if you couldn’t tell anyone?”

“I can’t tell Hayes we failed.”

“He doesn’t expect you to succeed.”

Joseph slammed his laptop shut with unnecessary vigor. “Yes he does! If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have sent us out here.”

Indrid scoffed. “Of course not. If anyone at the FBI believed you had a snowman’s chance in Hell, they wouldn’t have sent  _ me _ .”

“What?”

“Working with me is your punishment for not letting the bigfoot thing go.”

“Why would working with you be a punishment?”

“Please. I may be naive, but I’m not so foolish I don’t know how people see me. Do you think I was out of earshot when Hayes compared me to  _ Hoover?  _ That there’s no reason I’m not part of a real department and my desk is in the basement?” 

Indrid was right up in his face now, but Joseph didn’t back down. “I -” he sputtered. “Hayes is an idiot! Yeah, he said some dumb shit about you, but that doesn’t mean everyone thinks that way. I certainly don’t! I -” and what he almost said was  _ you’re hot and I’ve been trying so hard to impress you this whole time.  _ “I don’t hate working with you,” Joseph finished lamely.

But Indrid must have seen the truth in his eyes and the way his mouth opened and closed like he was choking. “You’re attracted to me.” His cheeks flushed slightly, and the set of his mouth changed from angry to thoughtful. 

Joseph could not fathom what the correct response would be. “I mean, yeah?”

“My attachment to you is not romantic, but still.” Indrid was standing less than a foot away. “May I kiss you?”

Joseph nodded, and Indrid closed the few inches between them, and Joseph cursed himself for how easily his mouth slipped open, the little sigh he gave, how  _ needy  _ he must seem. 

When Indrid pulled away his face was still impassive beneath his glasses, and God, was this man even human? Joseph reached for his wrist and found it, and the pulse beating triple-time beneath his skin was the only sign he’d just had his tongue in someone else’s mouth. 

His pulse, and that when he spoke again his voice was a little breathier than it had been. “Am I as you imagined?”

Joseph stepped back, ran a hand back through his hair, as though that would make him feel more grounded. “Jesus Christ, Indrid, what am I supposed to say to that?”

Indrid tilted his head. “I think it was a fair question.” 

Joseph shook his head. 

“Well, in that case I shall take my leave.” Indrid adjusted his sunglasses and got halfway out the door before he looked over his shoulder. “Are we… cool?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we’re cool.”

\--

“Hello, Aubrey. Can I speak to Duck Newton, please?” Indrid was lying in bed with his phone hot against his cheek. The result of the lottery had given him enough confidence in this particular vision to act on it. 

“ _ Go for Duck? _ ”

Indrid regretted that he didn’t have time for pleasantries, and could only hope that Duck recognized his voice. “In three minutes, your friend Leo Tarkesian is going to die. He will be… crushed to death, along with the three customers currently shopping at his store. You might want to do something about that.”

Then he hung up the phone. The visions of twisted steel and the desperate last breaths of people suffocating beneath it faded. He had thrown his lot in with the Pine Guard, and he did not plan to tell Joseph, either about bigfoot being so close or his belief that a ragtag group of monster-hunters would protect humanity more effectively than the United States government. 

He  _ liked  _ Joseph, to a genuinely disconcerting degree, and he foresaw himself getting even closer to him, but he didn’t know if he would be willing to keep such a big secret from the FBI. Joseph, unlike himself, had a professional reputation worth cultivating.

Indrid took a deep breath. There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” he called. “It’s open.”

“You leave your door unlocked?” said Joseph as he came in.

Indrid sat up. He was wearing flannel pajama pants and a white tank top, and he could feel Joseph’s gaze on his bare shoulders. “Not usually.” Only when he was expecting company. “How are you this evening?”

“I’m good.”

Indrid got himself out of bed, leaving the sheets tangled behind him, and plugged his phone back in on the desk.

“I managed to formulate a response to the absolutely buckwild thing you said last night.”

“Oh?”

“I had not  _ imagined,  _ uh, kissing you beforehand. But it was a pretty good time and I was wondering if you’d be down to do it again? Like, now? In a casual, I’m-bored-and-frustrated-about-not-finding-bigfoot way?”

Indrid thought of Duck’s broad silhouette, and of Joseph’s sharp cheekbones and the way his neat hair would feel between his fingers. And of the things he very much did not want to think about, such as the potential death of Leo Tarkesian and the injuries that might befall those who tried to stop it. 

“Yes,” he said. 

For an instant before Indrid closed his eyes, Joseph’s face was so close it was fully in focus. And then Joseph was kissing him, more aggressively than the day before.

“Fuck,” said Joseph. “This was an excellent idea.” And he kissed him some more.

\-- 

“He’s hiding something from me.” Joseph was elbow-deep in a basin of soapy water, scrubbing angrily at a pan.

“How can you tell?” said Barclay. He was drying and putting away the dishes Joseph washed: he was the one who knew where everything went, and half of the cabinets he used regularly were too high for Joseph (or any reasonably-sized person) to reach.

“He keeps disappearing.” 

Barclay smiled. “I don’t know if leaving you on read for three hours counts as disappearing.”

“It’s just… I’ve talked to people who’ve worked with him and his reputation is that he’s uncommunicative and tends to solve cases by himself, all at once, just by being in the right place at the right time.” 

“Have you found him uncommunicative in general?”

“No.” One pan clunked into the sink of rinse water and Joseph picked up another. “I actually  _ like  _ the guy, and that almost makes it worse. I’m sure you can imagine what the culture is like at headquarters. Indrid’s easier to be around than anyone I’ve worked with before.”

“Maybe he just has a more solitary workstyle.” Barclay hefted the cast-iron soup pot that had fed the entire lodge in one hand. 

“Maybe.”

“And even if there’s something he’s not telling you, it might not necessarily be about work.”

Joseph realized then how little he knew about Indrid’s personal life. He didn’t even know how  _ old  _ he was. Then he realized that neglecting to mention to Barclay that he and Indrid had been making out every other day may well be more major than whatever Indrid was hiding “You don’t hide stuff from people, do you?”

Barclay shrugged. “Depends on how good a reason I have to hide it.”

“I guess I care more because it’s about bigfoot. I lobbied for this investigation for  _ so long  _ and I don’t want him to solve it without me and getting the credit.”

“What have you been doing? Like, what’s your strategy for finding bigfoot?”

“I thought I’d be able to interview people, but either nobody in Kepler knows anything or they aren’t saying it. So right now I’m just spending a lot of time in the woods where I think bigfoot is the most likely to hang out.”

“Hm. To be honest, I don’t see how Indrid could be doing any better.”

Joseph watched the soapy water slosh as he hauled another pan. “That’s true. Even if he won’t tell me what he’s doing all day, he’s probably just as lost as I am.”

\--

Indrid was lying on his front on the ground near the visitor’s center, drawing, for once in his life, something that was physically in front of him. Tiny, bright-yellow flowers carpeted the ground beneath the trees here, and he happened to have a colored pencil the perfect shade to replicate them.

He hummed a little as heavy footsteps approached. “Hello, Duck.”

“Hey, Indrid. Mind if I join you?”

“Not at all.”

Duck sat cross-legged on the grass nearby. “Had another one of those prophetic dreams last night. Woke up with a splitting headache.”

Indrid made a sympathetic noise.

“How do you… feel, about your patron?”

“I love him,” said Indrid simply.

“Oh.” Duck was quiet for a moment. “I didn’t realize that was an option.”

“I doubt he views me with the same importance. We met at an unhappy time in my life, and sharing his power made me feel less alone.”

“Ah. See, my powers showed up when I was busy with other things.”

“That makes sense.” The sun had shifted enough since he began that the shadows that played on the flowers in Indrid’s drawing were no longer true-to-life. “Maybe you needed to grow into them a little.”

“They’re a little more useful now than they were then, at least.”

Indrid nodded. “Do you know where the abominations come from?”

“No,” said Duck. “You haven’t had any visions about that, have you?”

“No. But if I do, I know who to call.”

\--

Tonight, Joseph dealt with his annoyance at Indrid’s caginess by pulling him into his lap and kissing him senseless. By this time he considered himself a connoisseur of Indrid’s mouth under his, the way his cheeks went pink, the way he gasped when Joseph scraped his teeth across his lips. 

But they’d never done more than this, so when Indrid’s thumb rubbed across Joseph’s nipple through his shirt, he pulled back. “Hey. You, uh. I’m feeling maybe third base, if you are?”

“Yes,” said Indrid softly.

Joseph paused, running his fingers thoughtfully through the hair at the nape of Indrid’s neck. “So you know how you’re hiding from the FBI that you’re basically blind?”

Indrid laughed a little. “I do know that.”

“Well, there’s something about me that I’d really appreciate if you never, ever told  _ anyone  _ else at the FBI. I’m -” Joseph paused, the rational part of his brain that usually kept him from having casual sex catching up with the rest of him.

“-trans?”

Joseph shoved him unceremoniously off his lap. Indrid landed on his feet, stumbled backward, and Joseph, leaping up after him, wasn’t even gratified to see that he was hard. “How did you know. How the FUCK did you know. Who told you? Have you been -”

“No, I -”

“And it’s not that I’m ashamed!” Joseph threw up his hands. “It’s just, working for the FBI had been my dream for so many years, and if I have to pretend to be a cishet to do that, then so be it! What the  _ fuck,  _ Indrid?”

“Of course. I… look, I can see the future. It’s how I’m so good at solving cases, and also how I avoid running into stuff most of the time.”

Joseph massaged his temples. “I don’t suppose you have any proof of this.” 

“I do, actually.” Indrid went and rummaged for his briefcase. He came back with a bright green slip of paper, which he handed to Joseph. 

It was a lottery ticket, purchased three days prior. Joseph took his phone out of his pocket and typed  _ west virginia lottery numbers _ into Google. “Holy shit.” 

“I bought that when I thought my powers might be malfunctioning. Do you believe me now? I knew you were trans because - I saw, just now. Ahead of time.”

Joseph handed back the ticket. “I hate to admit it, but I am more willing to believe that you can see the actual future than that you won the lottery by chance and didn’t mention it.”

Indrid nodded, and crumpled the ticket in his hand. 

“Wait, you’re just throwing that away? Did you collect the payout?” 

“No? I just wanted to see if I could predict the winning numbers.” 

“Indrid, that ticket is worth  _ ninety thousand dollars! _ ” 

“What, you want it?” 

“I have student loan debt!” Joseph reached over and took the ticket out of his hand, smoothed it out and put it on the desk. 

Then he reached out for Indrid, pulled him close to his chest again. “Indrid.” He held Indrid’s face in his hands, kissed him hard. “You’re so fucking weird. And now that we’ve gotten that stuff out of the way, I still would very much like to have sex with you, and I feel like that’s where we were heading before we were interrupted?”

\--

It was past eleven, and Barclay had only just finished scraping the remains of lasagne out of the pan from dinner and was wiping down the countertops. Joseph had been so helpful with after-meal cleanup recently that Barclay had almost forgotten how to do it by himself.

The door to the kitchen swung open. “Excuse me,” said Indrid, dressed for once in the suit jacket that was his uniform, though it was unbuttoned and hung loose around his shoulders.

“Yeah?” said Barclay, wiping his hands on a towel. 

“I would normally let my partner do the talking, but… in this I thought you might want to involve as few people as possible.”

“What are you talking about?”

He wanted to get out ahead of Joseph asking whether he’d had any cryptozoological future visions. “You’re bigfoot.”

Barclay took a step forward. The lines of fatigue on his face hardened as futures crystallized and Indrid saw that he’d made a mistake, that he should have had this conversation at a different time, a time when Barclay wasn’t half-asleep on his feet. Indrid ducked an instant before Barclay swung, then slipped back out the kitchen door and sprinted down the hallway. 

He skidded to a halt in front of Joseph’s door and banged on it. “Stern. Stern. Let me in right this INSTANT,” he yelled through the door, pitch increasing on the last word as Barclay slammed into him and lifted him easily off the ground by the collar. 

“What the  _ fuck,”  _ hissed Barclay. Indrid wasn’t even trying to fight, eyes squeezed shut behind his glasses, and Barclay didn’t strike him. Not only was Barclay less inclined to inflict violence upon a federal agent than most residents of the lodge, there was one person in particular he  _ definitely  _ did not want to behave badly in front of. And Indrid knew it. 

“Indrid, what the -” Joseph opened the door to see a very angry Barclay, still wearing an apron, with Indrid hanging from his hand as limp as a newborn kitten. “Barclay! What in heaven’s name is going on?”

“Did you tell him?” said Barclay.

“No,” said Indrid. 

“Barclay, what the fuck?” said Joseph. “Do I need to tell you to pick on someone your own size?” There was genuine offense in his voice, and Barclay looked from him to Indrid, and set him down.

Indrid stood unperturbed. “It seems I have made an error in judgement.”

“I’ll fucking say you did,” said Barclay. “And the three of us have some things to discuss. Joseph, mind if we barge in?”

Joseph was in his underwear, and looked from the bags under Barclay’s eyes to Indrid’s hunched frame. “Sure.”

Barclay shut the door firmly behind them and locked it. “If he gets to know, you do too.” And he pulled off his bracelet.

“Holy shit,” said Joseph. He scrambled backwards directly into Indrid, gripped at Indrid’s shirt, and Indrid wrapped his arms around him, supporting his weight, and said nothing. 

“Congratulations,” said Barclay dryly. “You found bigfoot.” He ran a hand through his hair. He was taller like this, and broader, and of course there was all the hair, but his face was the same, Joseph realized. Still Barclay.

“Indrid, I’m sorry for freaking out,” said Barclay. “It’s been sixty years and  _ nothing  _ good has come of humans figuring out the truth. I’ve had to go on the run more times than I can count, and I really can’t leave Kepler.”

“Because of the abominations?” said Indrid.

Barclay gave him a sharp look. “How -”

“Duck told me about the abominations. The bigfoot thing I figured out on my own.”

“Yes, because of the abominations.”

“Do you know the mothman?”

“No. He’s not one of us, never quite figured that one out.”

“Ah.” Indrid gently lowered a still shell-shocked Joseph onto the bed. “I ask because, you see, I do.”

“You  _ what?” _

Indrid sighed. “He is the source of my power. I made a deal with him, and he granted me clairvoyance in exchange for my service to him preventing disasters. But he hasn’t been in touch for the past few years.”

“Preventing disasters?” said Joseph. “Like 9/11?”

“I got myself transferred to the CIA in December 1999, and I tried, I really did. And of course, the places I succeeded, the disasters that never were, you haven’t heard of.”

“Fair.”

“I bring the mothman up because I think he could help with the abominations. He has expertise that I do not, and his visions are clearer and extend farther into the future than mine.”

“Alright,” said Barclay. “Sounds good to me. How do we get in touch?”

Indrid went to his own room and came back with a tiny glass bottle of yellowish oil. “I need an open flame. The fire pit by the hot spring should do nicely.”

Indrid built the fire while Barclay went to explain to Mama what was going on. Joseph sat in one of the patio chairs with his chin in his hands. By the time the fire was roaring, Barclay was back, and Mama too, standing with her arms folded across her chest just outside the circle of light. 

Indrid tipped a few drops - a mix of floral essential oils, filling the air with the scent of roses - into the fire. The oil spattered and cracked as it burned, and the wind changed, blowing smoke into Joseph’s face. He closed his eyes for a moment against it, and when he opened them again the mothman was there. 

A ten-foot beast, mahogany with tan eyespots near the ends of his wings, crouched on six segmented limbs. The red glow of his eyes, round and much too large for his head, cast into shadow whatever of a face he might have had. 

“Hello, little Indrid,” the mothman said, in the rasping voice of one without a mouth, forcing sound through proboscis and mandible. “It has been too long.” His body bore no trace of human shape, and seemed like something out of an earlier time, before the Jurassic, when the air was volatile with oxygen, enough to support these beasts who breathed through their skin. 

“It has,” Indrid agreed.

The clicking of mandibles. “I was in the middle of something, so this had better be important.”

“In that case I shall be brief. Here in Kepler, West Virginia, there is a portal to another world. And monsters of unknown origin with the potential to destroy the world.”

“Ah,” said the mothman, and turned his face up towards the sky. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” His eyes glowed brighter for a moment, so bright Joseph had to look away, and he noticed that Indrid’s eyes glowed too behind his glasses, and he was cradling his head as though in pain, though he did not cry out. 

“Sylvain is hurting,” said the mothman, “but she is not lost. She is here, concealed in a manner the name of which I do not know. The abominations are from another place entirely.” Then the mothman’s eyes stopped glowing.

“Well, that’s real fuckin’ helpful,” said Mama, speaking up for the first time.

The mothman did not respond, but reached one of his six appendages out to Indrid. His legs had clawed hooks on the end, but Indrid did not flinch, but leaned into it, allowing the mothman to stroke his cheek. 

“You have done well, little Indrid,” said the mothman. “I am sorry I have been so far away for so long. Take comfort in this: even when I am on the other side of the world, you are always mine.”

Indrid nodded once, shakily, and Joseph thought he might be crying.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in this one they fuck

Joseph woke up early the morning after the mothman arrived. He knocked on Indrid’s door, heard no answer. On a hunch he tried the doorknob and found it open. From inside the room he could hear the shower running. 

There was a yellow Post-It on the bathroom door that read YES. Fucking future vision.

Joseph went to his own room and came back with a bottle of his own shampoo, strawberry-scented. He locked the door to Indrid’s room behind him. He’d rather not rely on Indrid’s advance knowledge of who might turn the knob. Then he took a deep breath and cracked open the bathroom door. 

“Good morning,” said Indrid from behind the opaque shower curtain.

“You’re suggesting that I join you?” said Joseph.

“If you’d like.”

Joseph sighed. He stripped off the clothes he’d only just put on, left them in a neatly folded pile on the lid of the toilet. Pulled aside the shower curtain just enough to get inside, shampoo in hand.

The water was scalding hot, and Joseph moved quickly out of the stream of it. Indrid’s face looked naked without his glasses. Joseph leaned in to kiss him, telegraphing every movement. He didn’t know how much Indrid could see.

“I always feel more vulnerable without my glasses on,” Indrid said, and turned back around, so water ran down his face.

“Is that what you want? To feel vulnerable?” Joseph touched Indrid’s shoulder, the jutting blade of it, feverish from steam. If he was mostly-blind he’d want to be sure of where everyone was. 

“Now it is.”

Joseph moved closer, his chest right up against Indrid’s back, rested his chin on Indrid’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around his chest, touching the smooth planes of it.

“You found him terrifying,” said Indrid.

“The mothman? Yes. But I could see that he was… important to you,” Joseph said. It was the same kind of thing he would say about a questionable ex.

Indrid nodded. “Let me wash your hair for you?”

Joseph laughed. “I presume you’d like me on my knees for that?”

“I shall revise my proposition, then. Would you like me on my knees for you?”

“Yes,” said Joseph, and Indrid turned to face him again, touched his shoulders and chest and belly and hips as he felt his way into a kneeling position. 

Indrid wrapped his arms around Joseph’s thighs, and Joseph backed up until his back was against the wall, which was uncomfortably cold for only a moment until it was warmed by his skin. Bracing himself against it he lifted his leg enough to allow Indrid in, his own wetness mingling with the wet of the shower and of Indrid’s tongue.

“I’ll even wash your hair for you,” Joseph said.

Indrid nodded against him, and Joseph squeezed a little blob of his own strawberry-scented shampoo into his palm. It turned Indrid’s hair pink until Joseph massaged it into white foam, tugging a little on the white strands when Indrid sucked on his clit. 

_ You’re mine,  _ the mothman had said, touching Indrid’s odd-gorgeous face with monstrous claws. Joseph wondered if his hands, warm and human in Indrid’s hair, seemed cold against the hot water. He wondered if after this Indrid’s pillow would smell like him. 

Then he wondered if there were futures in which he’d said any of that out loud. Probably not, because Indrid was still licking him open, and Joseph closed his eyes and focused on the feeling. 

Indrid pulled back just enough to speak, his breath cool against Joseph’s wet thigh. “My fingers?” he said.

“Yes,” said Joseph, and then Indrid was licking him again, working one finger in underneath his tongue. Joseph was tight around it; it was almost too much, but Indrid didn’t push for more, curled his finger up and all of a sudden it  _ was _ too much, and Joseph felt under the water and steam like his body was much too large for his skin, and he pulled hard on Indrid’s soapy hair and finished, like that.

“Fuck,” he said finally. 

“Alright?” said Indrid, resting his cheek now against Joseph’s trembling thigh. His eyes were wide for a moment, unfocused, before he had to close them against the soap running down out of his hair. 

“Get up, I want to kiss you,” said Joseph, and when Indrid stood Joseph could taste himself on his lips. “You’re good at that.”

“Thank you,” said Indrid. “I use clairvoyance to cheat.” He stepped back for a moment, ran his fingers through his hair until the water running out of it went clear again. “And thank you for washing my hair. It smells so sweet I fear I may attract bees.”

When Indrid moved forward again Joseph pressed his lips against the beads of moisture on his neck and trailed his fingers down Indrid’s chest. He was still a little boneless, and Indrid supported his weight easily. “Does the mothman know how you abuse his gift?”

“It’s never come up.”

Indrid was hard, though he hadn’t touched himself, but flinched when Joseph’s hand brushed his cock. Joseph withdrew. “You okay?”

“Yes,” said Indrid, “yes please, please touch me.”

Joseph smiled and wrapped his hand around Indrid’s length.

“It’s a surprise every time,” said Indrid as his hips stuttered forward to meet Joseph’s strokes, “you wanting me. Even though I can see it coming. You know you could have  _ Barclay,  _ right?”

Joseph shut him up with a messy kiss. “There is more than one attractive man in the world.”

Indrid sighed, from pleasure and from something more obscure underneath. “I know. God, I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> damn i should have known that id keep having feelings about this au. just want to clarify that this is also not meant to be a depressing scene? idk how well that came across. it's definitely weird sex that they're having but also good

**Author's Note:**

> boy howdy do i have a lot of emotions about this. indrid feeling so isolated and lonely that one tiny bit of approval from the only person who never made him feel Other absolutely breaks him? stern being 100% willing to put up a facade to be respected at work? fellas??
> 
> anyway hit me up on tumblr @bellafarallones


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